Daily Archives: February 1, 2022
3 fishermen rescued after vessel sinks off South Shore of Massachusetts
Three fishermen are recovering from “severe hypothermia” after their vessel sank. Scituate Town Administrator James Boudreau said the town’s emergency dispatch center received a 911 call shortly after 2:35 p.m. Tuesday from a Marshfield woman who reported that she saw a boat sinking as 
she walked along Humarock Beach. “We had three victims clinging for life,” Murphy said. “They were in the water close to 45 minutes to an hour already.” The fishing vessel they were on was a scalloping boat out of Gloucester named the F/V Bing Bing. Video, >click to read< 20:01
Jeffrey Hutchings, advocate for independent fisheries science, dies at age 63
A Canadian ecologist and fisheries scientist who criticized political interference in scientific advice on declining fish populations, particularly the northern cod, has died at the age of 63. Colleagues at Dalhousie University’s department of biology said Jeffrey Hutchings, a longtime professor at the Halifax school, died at his home during the weekend. The cause of death was not released. >click to read< 19:22
Fishery Disaster Assistance: Aid can take years to come through
The designation is supposed to unlock funds to help the communities impacted by those fisheries failures, including communities around Cook Inlet. But it can take years for the money to reach fishermen’s pockets. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the timing is one of the problems with the process. “If you’ve had a disaster that happened in 2018, we’re sitting here in 2022 and you’re saying, ‘Really? You think that that’s going to help me?’ In the meantime. I’ve got a boat mortgage that I’ve got to be paying. I’ve got a crew that I’ve got to be paying. This doesn’t help me at all,” she said. >click to read< 16:49
VMS a ‘perfect storm’ of red tape for small-scale fishermen in England
Vessel monitoring systems are an essential tool towards fully documented fisheries. Across the UK, the devolved nations worked in harmony over the past 20 years to install on vessels first over 24m, then 15m and finally over 12m vessels. But now, small scale fishermen with under 12m vessels in England say the long delayed roll out of the Government’s inshore vessel monitoring system is discriminatory and unfair to their class of vessel and has a timeframe that is impossible to comply with. Felixstowe Ferry fishermen James Whyte said, It’s just another example of the Government putting pressure on us to meet an arbitrary time frame we just aren’t ready for because of their delays and their shortcomings. In our area we often have to book technicians weeks in advance because we have none locally”. >click to read< 13:54
Tragic sinking of F/V Louisa was an ‘unusual and exceptional’ event
Martin Johnstone, 29, Chris Morrison, 27, and skipper Paul Alliston, 42, were asleep when the creel vessel Louisa began taking on water while at anchor near Mingulay, off the Outer Hebrides, on April 9 2016. An inquiry before Sheriff Derek Pyle, at Lochmaddy Sheriff Court in North Uist, has been told how what happened to the stricken Stornoway-registered vessel was “a very unusual and exceptional event”. It heard how the vessel sank by the bow and foundered, probably due to flooding of the hold, with the exhausted crew all in their accommodation and asleep when the incident occurred. >click to read< 12:25
South Atlantic: NMFS accepting input on “ropeless” black sea bass pots
The National Marine Fisheries Service is accepting comments on an application for an exempted fishing permit from Sustainable Seas Technology Inc. The applicant proposes deploying modified black sea bass pots with acoustic subsea buoy retrieval systems in federal waters off North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and northeastern Florida. Adaptation of “ropeless” systems for this style of pot fishing could reduce risk to these whales and other marine animals that suffer entanglements, according to the applicant. >click to read< 09:56 fixed gear
U.S. lobster set to feed another Chinese New Year as demand booms
The week-long holiday, commonly known as the Spring Festival or the Lunar New Year, is typically one of the busiest times for the U.S. lobster business. Appetite for the crustaceans remains strong in China this year, despite pandemic-related challenges to transportation and logistics, according to U.S. lobster industry members. “I have orders every day. Whether I can get them all on the airplanes every day becomes a question,” Bill Bruns, operations manager at The Lobster Co. >click to read< 08:16
